The Never-Ending Headache! A Cancer Update...

I didn't think I would be posting a cancer update this soon as it is not quite 3 months since my last update, but...

On Monday, January 27, I woke up with a headache and it has been with me ever since! I fall asleep and it's there. I wake up and it's there. It's like carrying a permanent piece of luggage around. At first, I didn't think much of it. While it is not a debilitating headache, it is annoying to have this constant pain. On a pain scale of 1-10, it's usually around a 4. It's a tension-type headache - meaning that it creates a band of pain around my head.

I thought perhaps that it was a sinus infection, but the symptoms are all wrong for sinusitis.  Then after a day or two, I thought it might be a water enhancer I was using, which was sweetened with sucralose. Side effects of sucralose for some people are headaches. I cut that out of my diet and still the headache remained. After day 11, I started getting concerned, mostly because the headache is not the only problem that I have been having. Adding to the painful head are dizzy/vertigo spells, phonophobia, neck pain, and mild depression. Joy! All of which are side effects to brain tumors. Now, I am not saying that's what I have. I'm saying that among other things, it could be brain metastases.

The three places that endometrial cancer most often spreads to are liver, lung, and brain. As we know, my cancer has already spread to my lungs, but my brain had never been scanned. Naturally, I start thinking the worst. After a couple of days of playing telephone tag with my oncologist, I finally just made an appointment to see her. Today, I met with her and she decided that it would be wise to schedule an MRI to rule out brain mets. Unfortunately, the hospital was unable to get me an appointment for a brain scan until Saturday. I will have a further update after the scan.

Until then, think happy thoughts and hope that it's not the worst case scenario.